Rudolf Bahro

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Rudolf Bahro (born November 18, 1935 in Bad Flinsberg , Löwenberg district in Silesia , † December 5, 1997 in Berlin ) was a German philosopher , politician and social ecologist. He was one of the most prominent dissidents in the GDR and became known for his book Die Alternative (1977), which was critical of socialism . In 1979 he left the GDR, lived in West Germany until 1989, and from 1990 back in Berlin.

Bahro at a federal assembly of the Greens

childhood and education

Rudolf Bahro was the eldest of three children of the livestock management consultant Max Bahro and his wife Irmgard, geb. Conrad. The family lived in Lower Silesia until 1945 , first in Bad Flinsberg , then in the neighboring town of Gerlachsheim ( Lauban district ), where Rudolf attended the village school. Towards the end of the Second World War , the father was called up for military service and was taken prisoner in Poland. As the eastern front approached, the family was evacuated. During the escape, Rudolf was separated from his mother and siblings, and they soon died of typhus . Rudolf spent a few months with an aunt in Austria and Hesse and finally found his father again, who ran a widow's farm in Rießen ( Guben district ). In 1951 Max Bahro married Frieda Reiter, also widowed, in Fürstenberg (Oder) , who brought her son Gerhard into the marriage, who was seven years older than Rudolf.

From 1950 to 1954, Rudolf Bahro attended high school in Fürstenberg. Since membership in the Free German Youth (FDJ) was required for admission to secondary school , he reluctantly entered there in 1950. This was, as he later commented, the only time he did something against his will under pressure. In 1952, however, he applied for membership in the SED , which he was accepted into in 1954. Bahro was considered extremely intelligent and passed the Abitur “with distinction”. He studied philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin from 1954 to 1959 . His teachers included Kurt Hager (who later became the chief ideologist of the SED), Georg Klaus and Wolfgang Heise . The topic of his diploma thesis was " Johannes R. Becher and the relationship of the German working class and its party to the national question of our people".

Until 1956, Bahro was an ardent admirer of Lenin and Stalin . The revelations of Khrushchev on the XX. CPSU party congress in February 1956, at which some crimes of Stalinism were openly addressed for the first time , deeply shook Bahro's worldview. He followed the unrest that soon broke out in Poland and Hungary with great interest, and he wrote a protest declaration for a wall newspaper in which he expressed his solidarity with the rebels and openly criticized the restrictive information policy of the GDR government. This prompted the State Security to observe and spy on him for two years.

The party worker

After the state examination, Bahro went to Sachsendorf ( Seelow district ) in the Oderbruch region on behalf of the party , where he published the village newspaper Die Linie and was supposed to persuade the farmers to join the cooperative ( LPG ). In 1959 he married the Russian teacher Gundula Lembke, who brought a daughter into the marriage and in the following years gave birth to two more girls (one of whom died on the day of birth) and a boy. In 1960 Bahro was appointed to the university party leadership in Greifswald , where he founded the newspaper Our University , of which he was the editor in charge. That year his first book was published, a volume of poems: In this direction . From 1962 he worked as a consultant for the central board of the science union in Berlin, from 1965 as deputy editor-in-chief at the youth and student magazine Forum, published by the FDJ . In this position there were repeated conflicts with the increasingly restrictive policies of the SED, which led to criticism of Bahro. Because of the unauthorized reprint of Volker Braun's piece Kipper Paul Bauch , he was finally relieved of this post in 1967.

The way to the "alternative"

From 1967 to 1977 Bahro worked in various companies in the rubber and plastics industry in the field of work organization. This confrontation with the actual conditions in the factories soon led him to believe that the GDR economy was in a serious crisis and that the main reason for this was that the workers in the factories had practically nothing to say. He formulated this view in December 1967 in a letter to the Chairman of the State Council, Walter Ulbricht , and suggested that responsibility in the factories should be transferred to the workers in the interests of grassroots democracy . A few weeks later there were changes in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia , which ushered in the Prague Spring . Bahro took an active part in it and supported the development there. In May 1968 he was quoted for a conversation with an employee of the Central Committee who made it clear to him that his solidarity with the “ counter-revolution ” would no longer be tolerated in the ČSSR. Bahro drew the consequence from this to systematically expand and publish his thoughts. This decision was strengthened and modified when, on August 21, 1968, the Prague Spring was ended at armed forces by invading Warsaw Pact troops (especially those of the Soviet Union). That was, as Bahro later once said, "the blackest day" of his life and the reason for the final break with the SED. For tactical reasons, however, he decided not to make this break publicly in order not to endanger his book project.

After a preparatory study of literature, Bahro began part-time work on his dissertation in 1972 on the development conditions of university and technical school cadres in state-owned companies in the GDR , which was to bring part of his project into the academic discourse. At the same time he secretly wrote a thematically broader manuscript, from which the book The Alternative later emerged. 1973 Gundula Bahro filed for divorce. As both spouses later stated, this was a precautionary measure to protect the children, in particular, from expected state reprisals. Gundula Bahro went even further and contacted the State Security in 1974 to inform them about her ex-husband's book project, which had been kept secret until then, and to finally hand over a copy of the manuscript. From this time on, Rudolf Bahro was intensely observed and spied on without his knowledge.

In 1975 he submitted his dissertation to the TH Merseburg . It was initially rated very positively by three reviewers. But then the Stasi stepped in, organized two counter-reports and thus thwarted the doctorate. The work on the alternative manuscript, however, was only observed and not hindered. However, Bahro came to the conviction that his original intention to distribute this book, which was actually written for GDR citizens, in large numbers in the GDR could not be realized. In December 1976 he learned that one of the copies that he had distributed to friends and acquaintances for appraisal had ended up in the hands of the Stasi via a detour. This prompted him to finish the work on short notice. A contract with the European Publishing House in Cologne had meanwhile been concluded through intermediaries . In the musicologist Harry Goldschmidt , Bahro found an unsuspecting helper who smuggled the finished manuscript to West Berlin. In addition, a number of copies of the manuscript were successfully mailed to selected people in the GDR.

Book "The Alternative"

The book is divided into three parts: The phenomenon of the non-capitalist path to industrial society - The anatomy of real existing socialism - On the strategy of a communist alternative . The preceding introduction begins with the postulate that the communist movement did not lead to the theoretically expected conditions, but basically continues the capitalist path with only superficial changes. "The alienation , the subalternity of the working masses continues on a new level." The book wants to analyze the reasons for this development and offer solutions.

The first main part is a historical analysis of the development of socialism in the Soviet Union . Bahro comes to the conclusion that there and subsequently also in countries like the GDR the theoretically expected socialism did not emerge, but a kind of proto-socialism. He sees the main reason for this in the fact that at the time of the October Revolution the Soviet Union was still far from the state of development that Marx assumed in his theory. Nevertheless, the path taken by Lenin was the right one. Bahro describes the massive industrialization subsequently pursued by Stalin as a necessary further development, whereby, as his biographer Guntolf Herzberg emphasizes, he does not condemn the Stalinist terror, but justifies it as inevitable.

In the second part, Bahro analyzes the actually existing form of society, which in his opinion is wrongly called socialism and is in reality still a class society. He explains in detail how this society works, and he argues that this is the reason for the economic stagnation that can be observed.

Finally, in the third part, he develops proposed solutions that include the demand for a new revolution that must change not only social conditions but also people. In essence, it is about overcoming subalternity, the "form of existence and way of thinking of 'little people'". The vertical division of labor and thus the alienation of work should be overcome, all people should participate in science and art as well as in "lower" work.

Reactions to "The Alternative"

On August 22, 1977, the West German magazine Der Spiegel published an excerpt from the book that had been announced for some time and an interview with Bahro, which made him publicly known as the author of this book for the first time. The next day, Bahro was arrested and taken to the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen remand prison. On the same evening, the West German television stations ARD and ZDF broadcast Bahro interviews that had been recorded a few days earlier - secretly overheard by the Stasi, but not hindered. These events received a lot of attention in the Western media.

The book went on sale at the beginning of September. The first edition was out of print before delivery, and translations into other languages ​​soon appeared. The alternative sparked an intense discussion in the Western European left about real socialism and the relationship to it. For Herbert Marcuse , Bahro's book was “the most important contribution to Marxist theory and practice that has appeared in the last few decades.” The Trotskyist Ernest Mandel , who was highly valued by Bahro, made a very similar statement . Lawrence Krader described Bahro as the "conscience of the revolution whose strength is the truth". Rudi Dutschke expressed himself more critically, who accused Bahro of being attached to Leninism and insufficient attention to human rights and classified his proposed solutions as "completely unrealistic".

This substantive dispute was accompanied by a broad wave of publicly expressed solidarity with Bahro. Its preliminary climax was an appeal initiated by Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass in the London Times on February 1, 1978, which Arthur Miller , Graham Greene , Carola Stern , Mikis Theodorakis and many other celebrities had signed. In the GDR, on the other hand, the whole affair was hushed up, and the imprisoned Bahro also learned nothing of the reactions to his book or to his arrest. Even of the copies that Bahro had sent within the GDR shortly before his arrest and that had not already been intercepted in the mail, about half were handed over to the authorities.

Writing and publishing a book like Die Alternative was not in itself a criminal offense in the GDR. Therefore, the public prosecutor constructed the fact that Bahro had collected information (and fictitious false information) for the West German constitutional protection out of "greed" and "transmitted" it to it by publishing the book. On June 30, 1978, Bahro was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in camera for "treasonous gathering of news" and "betrayal of secrets". The files show that the sentence had already been determined in advance of the trial, and the announcement of the verdict for the press was also formulated in advance. The process in which Bahro was defended by Gregor Gysi was therefore only a formality. Gysi's appeal to the Supreme Court of the GDR was immediately rejected as “obviously unfounded”.

After his conviction, Bahro was taken to the MfS special detention center in Bautzen II . After he had succeeded in secretly sending letters from prison to the West, a strictly separated corridor was set up especially for him in March 1979 in addition to the existing isolation areas. The State Security developed a security concept to prevent any contact with the outside world. She initiated the installation of additional doors and opaque frosted glass window panes, the installation of television cameras, special rules for the courtyard walk and work in the hallway. Only certain personnel were allowed access.

The pronouncement of the verdict immediately sparked violent and sustained protests and expressions of solidarity in the West. The highlight was the "International Congress for and about Rudolf Bahro" organized by the Committee for the Release of Rudolf Bahro , which took place from November 16-19, 1978 in West Berlin and was attended by over 2000 participants. The breadth of the solidarity movement is illustrated by an appeal to the State Council of the GDR in the Frankfurter Rundschau on May 11, 1979, which was organized by Bahro committees in 12 countries and signed by numerous celebrities. There were also awards: Bahro was awarded the “ Carl von Ossietzky Medal ” of the International League for Human Rights and was appointed a member of the Swedish and Danish PEN Centers.

On October 11, 1979, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the founding of the GDR, Bahro was pardoned at the same time as Nico Hübner . On October 17, he was deported to the Federal Republic of Germany together with his former wife, their two children and his partner Ursula Beneke. This was what he wanted; he had already submitted a corresponding application in July because he saw no meaningful employment opportunities in the GDR even after his imprisonment had ended.

Working in West Germany

Rudolf Bahro at a party conference of the Greens in Hamburg, 1984

In the Federal Republic of Germany, Bahro soon joined the nascent party The Greens . He campaigned to unite socialist and conservative values ​​in the new party. In view of the ecological crisis, a "historical compromise" between these two political directions is necessary. He formulated this in the book Elements of a New Politics - On the Relationship between Ecology and Socialism (1980). A major difference to the position he had taken in the alternative was that he now wanted to overcome classical Marxism, as it was no longer appropriate to the fundamentally changed framework.

Another new main motif in Bahro's thought was religion. During his imprisonment he had studied the Bible intensively , and when confronted with the reality of life in the West, he noticed that people were not happy despite their material prosperity. He interpreted this as a lack of inwardness and transcendence and thereby rejected the traditionally materialistic orientation of socialism. The decisive factor is the goal of human emancipation , which was represented in different ways by Karl Marx and Jesus Christ . In this context, Bahro referred primarily to early Christianity and liberation theology .

In early 1980 Bahro was at Oskar Negt at the University of Hanover with his rejected in Merseburg dissertation doctorate , which then as a book entitled Plea for creative initiative appeared. In 1983, he was there in social philosophy habilitation .

In the Greens, where Bahro was elected as a member of the federal executive committee in 1982, he took increasingly radical positions with which he was soon sidelined. In view of the economic crisis at the time, he advocated a fundamental restructuring of society in terms of economic, environmental and social policy, which should include, among other things, a far-reaching withdrawal from the world market and a move away from fixation on the capitalist industrial system. In addition, he was involved in the peace movement , where he advocated overcoming the bloc confrontation and a Europe free of nuclear weapons.

Under the heading “ dare commune ”, Bahro interfered in the discussion about alternative communities, which was lively in the founding phase of the Greens. In doing so, he took up a motive already mentioned in the alternative . The change in society must begin on a small scale, and that requires a change in the people themselves, which also includes a rediscovery of spirituality . He referred in particular to the religious order of the Benedictines and the mystical experience of God.

In 1981 he toured North Korea . He himself saw this trip as his most important trip since leaving the GDR: North Korea had "achieved an admirable development" after the Korean War. With regard to free education and a free health system, there is a system in which "all basic needs are surely satisfied". At the same time, however, he warned North Korea against a development that he had already portrayed as a systemic problem with his criticism in Die Alternative : In North Korea, too, according to Bahro, “objectively, some similar contradictions and problems are developing as they actually exist in other countries Socialism are already fully developed. "In 1995 he said in an interview:" Kim Il Sung , who was, as far as I could perceive, real, in complete contrast to this son [meaning Kim Jong Il ], who now rules. "Simultaneously But he confessed: "I knew the system from the inside and looked there at the moment Asian production method, which plays a major role in my 'alternative', in five minutes, so to speak."

In the summer of 1983 Bahro spent a few weeks in the community of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ( Osho ) in Rajneeshpuram ( Oregon ) as part of a lecture tour through the USA . He was very positive about this experiment. During this lecture tour and then also in the green milieu in Germany, he was therefore exposed to considerable hostility. After Rajneeshpuram was dissolved soon afterwards and Bhagwan had to leave the USA, Bahro cited the unreflected power structures as the main reason for the failure of this project.

After the Greens entered the Bundestag for the first time in March 1983 , the question arose as to whether one wanted to aim for government participation in the medium term (with the SPD ) or remain in the opposition . Bahro strongly advocated the latter option and thus came into conflict with Joschka Fischer in particular . According to Bahro, there is no need for green reforms, but for a fundamentally new policy. In this context, in his sensational “Hamburg Speech” in December 1984, he used a comparison with the socio-political situation in the Weimar Republic : At that time there was also a broad movement in society that was dissatisfied with the prevailing conditions and is changing them wanted to. In view of the expected worsening of the crisis, it is now important to prevent the mistakes made at the time and thus another political catastrophe. In the Weimar Republic, the “brown” pole of the political spectrum (the National Socialists ) was able to take up the movement critical of the system because the left could not do anything with the “ resistance to alienating capitalist development in the guise of national mythology ”. In order for the “popular uprising” expected by Bahro to be non-violent this time, it is important that the Greens “do not get lost” by becoming part of the system. In addition, Bahro pleaded for overcoming the right-left scheme: In order to get out of the minority position, the Greens would also have to " penetrate the territory of the Bavarian CSU ". Bahro's Hamburg speech culminated in the accusation that the " Realos " around Joschka Fischer would seek a situation out of lust for power that could lead to a civil war and a subsequent dictatorship, which triggered violent protests on the part of those addressed. But the competing “ Fundis ” or eco-socialists around Jutta Ditfurth , who had previously viewed Bahro as an ally, were alienated.

In the summer of 1985 Bahro resigned from the party and concentrated on working on a new book, which appeared in 1987 under the title Logic of Salvation . In it he described a "logic of self-extermination" that humanity is currently following, and contrasted this with a "logic of salvation", which must essentially consist of a "leap in consciousness" if the downfall of humanity is to be averted. A radical turnaround and a far-reaching withdrawal from the industrial "mega-machine" are necessary. It is important to initiate a corresponding “rescue policy” before the worsening ecological crisis leads to a state of emergency and thus inevitably to an emergency government. As a characteristic of this rescue policy, Bahro et al. a. the orientation towards long-term goals, the renunciation of short-term tactics and the decentralization of sovereignty . For this, a majority in the population must be found, and this policy must be supported by a movement that Bahro also referred to as the "Invisible Church", with which he emphasized what he believed to be the necessary spiritual dimension. He expected useful approaches to such a policy more from conservative than from left circles, referring in particular to the CDU politician and growth critic Kurt Biedenkopf . Encouraged by Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika , Bahro hoped for a “prince of the ecological turnaround” and proposed the establishment of a consensus-based upper house similar to the British House of Lords . Initially, the book met with little and mostly negative feedback. Above all, Bahro's speech of a "prince of the turning point" and an "invisible church" was criticized.

In 1986 Bahro organized so-called learning workshops in his house in Worms , in which his ideas were discussed and meditated. Then he got to know Beatrice Ingermann, who had been running a similar project in Niederstadtfeld ( Eifel ) since 1983, which was also a community. Bahro joined this project. In 1988 he married Beatrice Ingermann, with whom he soon had a daughter.

Back in Berlin and the Institute for Social Ecology

During a meditation in the learning workshop in the Eifel, Bahro felt the impulse to move back to Berlin in November 1989. On the one hand, in view of the rapid collapse of the GDR , he wanted to counter the feared "sucked up" of the GDR by the Federal Republic and to work for the GDR to retain its autonomy and, in his opinion, the most important political achievement, the primacy of politics over the economy can preserve. On the other hand, the insights of his book "Logic of Rescue", published in 1987, motivated him to set up new, interdisciplinary ecological research and education at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Bahro on December 16, 1989 at the SED special party conference

On December 16, 1989, Bahro was given the opportunity to address the delegates at the extraordinary party congress of the SED, whose chairman had been his former legal advisor Gysi a week earlier. The main theme of the party congress was the question of whether the party would dissolve or continue; it was finally decided to continue under the new name "SED-PDS". Bahro's request to speak as a guest speaker found only a slim majority (54%), and he was only given 30 minutes instead of the 45 requested. Bahro was upset about this and had to improvise. After reading out the names of all the people who had helped him with the alternative , he criticized the previous speaker, Prime Minister and Deputy Party Chairman Hans Modrow , as well as Karl Marx , Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin . He then briefly presented his vision of a “socio-ecological” restructuring of the GDR. His radical ecological ideas, which at that time were hardly known in the GDR, were far removed from the questions that moved the delegates, and the polemical introduction aroused violent displeasure. Bahro came to the conclusion that nothing connected him with this party anymore.

In the spring of 1990 he began to set up an institute for social ecology at the Humboldt University . In contrast to the usual discussion of the ecological crisis, this institute should think holistically and, above all, research the deeper social and cultural causes of the crisis and develop practical alternatives. With this, Bahro founded a new, socially, culturally and humanistically subdued ecological approach. This is not to be confused with others, which are also referred to as social ecology .

On June 16, 1990 the previously convicted Bahro - again represented by Gysi - was fully rehabilitated by the Supreme Court of the GDR. On September 15, shortly before the end of the GDR, the Minister of Education and Science appointed him extraordinary professor for social ecology at the Humboldt University. From the 1990/1991 winter semester, Bahro held regular lectures on questions of the ecological crisis, in which he further developed the theses raised in the logic of rescue . The lectures, to which he often invited guest speakers, were aimed at students of all semesters ( Studium generale ) and also met with great interest from non-university audiences. In the first few years the auditorium of the university was completely full. The lectures, which always took place on Mondays at 6 p.m., were open to the public and often attracted over 500 listeners from various faculties and from all over Berlin.

The Institute for Social Ecology, which was created in the intellectual freedom after the fall of the Berlin Wall and with the political support of the then green Berlin Senator for Science Barbara Riedmüller-Seel and the Schweisfurth Foundation , not only met with a varied positive response in science and the public, but also had opponents in the field of the established ones Science. In the course of a general evaluation of the Humboldt University and its innovations that emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was evaluated in 1993/94 by a commission of West German scientists. However, this commission, headed by the sociologist Friedhelm Neidhardt , did not find access to Bahro's highly interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ecological approaches, which were still unusual for the time, and therefore pleaded for it to be carried out. Therefore, from 1995 to 1997 it was only continued as a working group of the Faculty of Agriculture and Horticulture at the university.

In 1990 the accusation arose that Bahro was striving for an “eco-dictatorship”. It was presented particularly aggressively by the Zurich-founded association for the promotion of psychological knowledge of human nature , which named an " eco-fascist dictatorship" as Bahro's real goal under the title The Fascism of the New Left . Bahro protested indignantly, but was soon confronted with other such allegations. These were mainly based on quotations from his book Logic of Salvation . In 1992, his former party colleague Jutta Ditfurth also got involved in the debate by accusing him of turning to esoteric , authoritarian and völkisch ideas in her pamphlet Fire in the Heart .

Rudolf Bahro and Kurt Biedenkopf at a lecture as part of the Social Ecology cycle at the HU Berlin (1991)

In addition to his activities in Berlin, Bahro was still active in the learning workshop in Niederstadtfeld until 1991, and he planned corresponding experiments with new sustainable forms of life and economy in the former GDR. The socio-ecological future research project LebensGut in Pommritz near Bautzen emerged from a conversation with the Saxon Prime Minister Kurt Biedenkopf in the summer of 1991 . There, the socio-ecological research work begun at the Humboldt University is being continued, in particular by Bahro's former research assistant Maik Hosang .

In September 1993, Bahro's wife Beatrice committed suicide after a marital dispute. He was so shocked by this that he had to be exempt from lectures for a semester. In the spring of 1994 he became physically ill, and in the autumn of the same year a rare form of blood cancer ( non-Hodgkin lymphoma ) was diagnosed. Bahro was convinced that his illness was the result of traumatic experiences such as his wife's suicide, and he resisted conventional therapy. Instead, he made use of various “ alternative ” diagnostic procedures and therapies and temporarily retired to a monastery. Only when his condition there had deteriorated dramatically did he go back to chemotherapy. In May 1995 he married his partner Marina Lehnert in the hospital bed, who had been looking after his daughter for a long time. With this third marriage, Bahro became Erik Lehnert's stepfather .

tomb

After a one-year break due to illness, Bahro was able to resume teaching at Humboldt University in the 1996 summer semester, but only to a limited extent. He gave his last lecture in July 1997. In the summer of 1997 he contracted pneumonia and the cancer broke out again.

Rudolf Bahro died on December 5, 1997 in Berlin. He was buried in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery there.

A few years after Bahro's death, the suspicion arose that his cancer and that of two other former political prisoners ( Gerulf Pannach , Jürgen Fuchs ) could have been triggered by clandestine x-rays while in custody. In 2000, the Gauck authorities found out that the manuscripts sent by Bahro in the summer of 1977 had been marked with a radioactive substance by the MfS , which may have led to increased radiation exposure.

As part of an exhibition on his 65th birthday, which was created and shown at the Humboldt University in 2000, renowned scientists from Germany and abroad paid tribute to him, such as Allan Combs , Johan Galtung , Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker , Reinhard Loske , Dieter Steiner et al. a., Rudolf Bahro as a courageous and visionary thought leader of an ecological age.

Works

  • 1960: In this direction. Poems. Volk und Welt publishing house, Berlin (GDR) 1960.
  • 1977: The alternative. To the criticism of the actually existing socialism. 542 pages. EVA, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-434-00353-3 (Habilitation University of Hanover 1983, 542 pages, 22 cm).
    • English: The Alternative in Eastern Europe. By Rudolf Bahro. Translated by David Fernbach. 468 pp., NLB Publishing House, London 1978.
    • Paperback: rororo, Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1980, ISBN 3-499-17331-X (as paperback, 374 pages, 19 cm).
    • Verlag Tribüne, Berlin (GDR) 1990, 559 pages, with a current afterword by the author, ISBN 3-7303-0577-8 .
  • 1977: Rudolf Bahro. A documentation. EVA, 1977, ISBN 3-434-00366-5 .
    • 2nd extended edition: I will continue on my way. A documentation. (128 pages) EVA, Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-434-00399-1 .
  • 1979: Those who don't howl with the wolves. The example of Beethoven and seven poems. European Publishing House, Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-434-00403-3 .
  • 1980: with Ernest Mandel and Peter von Oertzen : What is in store for us. Perspectives of the 80s. Volume 1: Development tendencies in East and West. ISBN 3-88395-701-1 . Volume 2: The Political Perspectives of the 1980s. Olle and Wolter, Berlin (W) 1980, ISBN 3-88395-702-X . publishing company
  • 1980: elements of a new policy. On the relationship between ecology and socialism. Olle and Wolter, Berlin (W) 1980, ISBN 3-88395-703-8 .
    • English: Socialism and Survival. Articles, Essays and Talks, 1979-1982. With an introduction by EP Thompson . Publisher: Heretic-Books, London 1982. (160 pages)
  • 1980: Plea for creative initiative. To the criticism of working conditions in real existing socialism. Bund, Cologne 1980, ISBN 3-7663-0760-6 (Dissertation University of Hanover, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences 1980, 232 pages, 21 cm: Requirements and standards of work design for scientifically trained cadres in the industrial reproduction process of the developed socialist society ).
  • 1982: madness with method. About the logic of the bloc confrontation, the peace movement, the Soviet Union and the DKP. Olle & Wolter, Berlin (W) 1982, ISBN 3-88395-710-0 .
  • 1984: From Red to Green. Interviews with New Left Review. Verso Editions, London 1984, ISBN 0-86091-760-6 .
  • 1984: with J. Foudraine , A. Holl and E. Fromm : Radicality in the halo. To rediscover spirituality in modern society. Verlag Herzschlag, Berlin / W. 1984, ISBN 3-922389-14-7 .
  • 1984: pillar on the other bank. Contributions to the politics of the Greens from Hagen to Karlsruhe. Publisher: Zeitschrift Befreiung, Berlin / W. 1984, DNB 890507600
  • 1987: logic of salvation. Who can stop the apocalypse? An experiment on the fundamentals of ecological politics. Weitbrecht, Stuttgart 1987. Union-Verlag , Berlin 1990.
    • English: Avoiding Social and Ecological Disaster: The Politics of World Transformation . by Rudolph Bahro. 384 pages. Gateway publishing house, 1994.
  • 1988: with L. Neidhart , N. Reader and M. Voslensky : The future of democracy. Development prospects in East and West. Orac, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-7015-0161-0 .
  • 1989: Guest speech at the SED / PDS party congress on December 16, 1989. In: Lothar Hornbogen, u. a. (Ed.): Extraordinary party congress of the SED / PDS. Minutes of the discussions on 8./9. and 16 / .17. December 1989 in Berlin. Dietz, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-320-01972-4 .
  • 1991: with Reinhard Spittler (ed.): Return. The in-world crisis as the origin of world destruction. Altis-Verlag and Horizonte-Verlag, 1991, ISBN 3-926116-40-4 .
  • 1991: with H. Fink : Heinrich Fink and dealing with our past "an ordinary political measure". Leipzig, University Politics Working Group. Public, 1991.
  • 1995: Stay true to the earth! Apocalypse or Spirit of a New Age. Edition Ost, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-929161-53-2 .
  • 2002: with Franz Alt and Marko Ferst : Paths to the ecological turning point. Reform alternatives ... for a sustainable cultural system. Zeitsprung, 2002, ISBN 3-8311-3419-7 .
  • 2005: with Maik Hosang (ed.): Rudolf Bahro: Apocalypse or Spirit of a New Time, edition ost, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-929161-53-2 .
  • 2007: thinker, reformer, homo politicus. Nachgel. Texts, lectures, essays, speeches and interviews . Ed. Guntolf Herzberg, Edition Ost , 2007, ISBN 3-89793-151-6 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Bahro  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ printed in Guntolf Herzberg, Kurt Seifert: Rudolf Bahro - Faith in the changeable , paperback edition Berlin 2005, p. 38f
  2. ↑ Rudolf Bahro: The Alternative - To the Critique of Really Existing Socialism , paperback edition 1980, p. 7
  3. ↑ Herzberg / Seifert 2005, p. 177f
  4. ↑ That hits the party apparatus in the heart . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1977, pp. 30 ( online ).
  5. ↑ See Hohenschönhausen Memorial Foundation : Bahros profile ( memo from January 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
  6. ↑ Herbert Marcuse: About Bahro, Proto-Socialism and Late Capitalism - Attempt at a revolution-theoretical synthesis of Bahro's approach. In: Critique , 6th vol. (1978) No. 19, pp. 5-27
  7. ↑ The “public” prescribed for the opening of the proceedings and for the pronouncement of the verdict consisted of 15 employees from the Ministry of State Security
  8. ↑ See Bautzen Memorial: Biography Bahros
  9. ↑ Group recording with President of the League for Human Rights, Section Berlin Erwin Beck . Europeana. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
  10. ↑ a b Old Home . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 1981 ( online ).
  11. ↑ They only wanted power . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1995 ( online ).
  12. ↑ in the extract printed in the logic of rescue , Stuttgart / Vienna 1987, p. 388ff
  13. ↑ Speech at the Federal Delegates' Conference in Hanover in June 1983, printed in Pfeiler am other Ufer , Berlin 1984, here quoted from Herzberg / Seifert, p. 398
  14. ↑ Summary in Herzberg / Seifert, pp. 411–435
  15. ↑ Logic of Salvation , pp. 314–321
  16. ↑ Research report on the content of the socio-ecological approach initiated by Bahro (PDF; 130 kB)
  17. ↑ Overview of Bahro's lectures at HU . The lectures in the first semester were published in the book "Return - Die In-Weltkrise ...", a few more lectures later in the book "Apocalypse or Spirit of a New Era"
  18. ↑ See Herzberg & Seifert, pp. 517-523, and Erik Lehnert: Der Ökofaschist. Bahro as a stimulating figure of the left and his examination of the problem of state and society in the ecological crisis. In Guntolf Herzberg (ed.): Rudolf Bahro: Thinker - Reformer - Homo politicus. Legacy work: The book of liberation, lectures, essays, speeches, interviews . edition ost, Berlin 2007, pp. 390f
  19. ↑ Jutta Ditfurth: Fire in the hearts. Plea for an ecological left opposition , 1992, pp. 206-211.
  20. ↑ See LebensGut.de .
  21. ^ Institute for Integrated Social Ecology
  22. ^ Sandra Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen: Strategy of a dictatorship , Robert-Havemann-Ges., Berlin 2003, p. 280f.
  23. ↑ Peter Wensierski : Stasi: Aligned at head height . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1999 ( online ).
  24. ↑ Stefan Berg: STASI: The trace of the rays . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 2000 ( online ).
  25. ↑ Project report "Rays". In: Publications of the Stasi Records Authority. BStU, accessed on May 8, 2019 .
  26. ↑ See Bahro exhibition 2000 .
  27. ^ Bahro 1977 (alternative) - The editions of the alternative in the DNB.
  28. ↑ Bahro 1984 (pillar) - 240 pages.
  29. ↑ Bahro 1987 - Logic of Rescue , Editor: Jochen Uebel, 530 pages.
  30. ↑ Bahro 2002 - A turning point. With Franz Alt and Marko Ferst (eds.)
  31. ↑ Literature 1978 - Answers from: Lucio Lombardo Radice, Jakob Moneta, Pierre Frank, Helmut Fleischer, Hassan Givsan, Lawrence Krader, Jiri Pelikan, Hermann Weber, Heinz Brandt, Joachim Bischoff, Klaus-Dieter Lühn, Rudi Dutschke. 232 pages.
personal data
SURNAME Bahro, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, politician (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen), philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Flinsberg
DATE OF DEATH 5th December 1997
Place of death Berlin